Royal Salford Hospital has admitted it "failed" to communicate urgent blood test results hours before a teenager at a Prestwich mental health unit died, an inquest has heard.

Rowan Thompson, 18, died while he was inpatient at the Gardener Unit at Prestwich Hospital just days before they were due to stand trial accused of murdering their mother Joanna Thompson in July 2019, the BBC previously reported.

At an inquest at Rochdale Coroner’s Court on Tuesday, jurors heard that Rowan, who identified as being non-binary, died just hours after a blood test conducted by Salford Royal Hospital found they had dangerously low levels of potassium.

Rowan, who had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and depression, was described as “exceptionally bright” by psychiatrist, Dr Naudeep Malik, and died at North Manchester General Hospital on October 3, 2020.

The inquest, presided by Senior Coroner for Manchester North, Joanne Kearsley, heard that the abnormal blood test result found the day before his death should have been reported by laboratory staff to the Gardener Unit within two hours.

Dr Allamedine, clinical lead for blood sciences at Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, told the court that laboratory staff made several attempts to contact the Gardener Unit, including through the Prestwich Hospital switchboard and via email, but failed to reach it.

The laboratory also sent the results electronically, but technical issues meant the low potassium finding was not received by the unit. 

Dr Allamedine said: “We would expect the bio-medical scientist to get this message communicated, this didn’t happen, and we failed to continue to try to contact the GMMH [Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust].”

He said that Salford Royal Hospital has since updated its procedures to ensure urgent results are communicated, and was assured that the IT issue that prevented the results being tranfered electronically had been resolved. 

He said: “The contact details provided by GMMH were not up to date.”

“We have updated our procedure of updating abnormal results.

“We have requested assurances from GMMH that their contact details were up to date, we have updated our escalation plan.”

The court heard that on September 25, 2020, around a week before his death, Rowan collapsed and fell while completing college work in his room.

His primary nurse Jennifer Kearns said: “They were very uneasy on their feet and slurring a bit with their speech.

“They were tired and worried they were going to fall asleep.”

Ms Kearns told the court that Rowan had no further issues the following morning and that no similar incident occurred either before or after.

She added that Rowan was a “a great person.”

“We got on well,” she said, “[They were] so funny, so energetic, great sense of humour, I’ll never meet another person like Rowan again, so intelligent.”

The inquest is expected to last for seven days.